Forged in Fire

by Michael A. Martin

  Sarek lapsed into a silence that bespoke either deep contemplation or a renewed attempt at comprehensive anger management. Dax had already begun mentally revising his professional curriculum vitae in preparation for his next job when Sarek’s facial tectonics underwent a sudden shift.

  It might have been a trick of the candlelight. Or perhaps it was something that only resembled a very small, very subtle smile.

  “It is now clear to me that you and my son Spock have a great deal in common, Mister Dax,” the Vulcan said. “Reckless impatience, for one thing.”

  “Doctor Chapel taught me a particular Earth idiom that might be appropriate to quote now,” Dax said, returning Sarek’s smile with a broad grin of his own. “ ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’ ”

  Sarek raised both eyebrows in response, but otherwise allowed the saying to pass without comment. Steepling his fingers between his nose and chin, he said, “It is also clear to me that I cannot argue with positive results, particularly in regard to adversaries as important and as dangerous as the Klingons. Despite your unorthodox approach to diplomacy, Mister Dax — which the IDIC philosophy arguably dictates that I regard as a consequence of your many long and varied symbiotic life-experiences as a joined Trill — you have demonstrated a more nuanced understanding of Klingon psychology than I possess.”

  Dax shifted uncomfortably on the floor and wondered how anyone could possibly sit this way for hours at a stretch. “Thank you, sir,” he said.

  Sarek rose to his feet, moving with supple grace. “Therefore I am willing to forgo taking any disciplinary action against you for your insubordination — at least so long as the promising relationships you have forged with Kang, Koloth, and Kor continue moving in such a productive direction.”

  “I’ll do my best, sir,” Dax said.

  “Of that I have no doubt, Mister Dax,” Sarek said. No trace of the earlier smile remained on his face, if it had ever been there at all. “Provided, of course, that you resist the temptation to allow one early success to make you overconfident in the future.”

  In spite of himself, Dax allowed his eyes to widen into an almost theatrical display of wounded surprise.

  “Overconfident? Me?”

  • • •

  Sitting behind the desk in her quarters, Cutler stared at the swagger stick as though it were an ancient artifact of some kind. The blistering and discoloration along its charred shaft neatly reinforced the illusion.

  Her door chime sounded. She set the burned stick down beside her computer and straightened in her chair, which she turned toward the door. “Come.”

  The door hissed open and Commander Sulu entered, looking tired but alert, the flap of his uniform jacket unbuttoned and hanging open. Like her late captain, she hated wearing her jacket that way anywhere outside of her quarters.

  “Commander Sulu,” she said, trying unsuccessfully to keep the surprise out of her voice; her new de facto CO was the last person she had expected to make a social call. She quickly got to her feet and took her own maroon jacket off the back of her chair and started to put it on over her white uniform turtleneck.

  “As you were, Commander,” Sulu said as he approached the desk. “Sorry to bother you so late in the evening.”

  “It’s no bother, sir.” She sat, her jacket on but unbuttoned. “What can I do for you?”

  Sulu shook his head, displaying a gentle yet somehow serious expression as he followed her lead and took a seat on the low sofa next to the panoramic window. “Nothing, Commander. I came because . . . because I was concerned about you.”

  She blinked, momentarily speechless. “I’m afraid I don’t understand, sir.”

  “I know that Captain Styles’s death has hit you hard, Commander. Maybe harder than anybody else aboard this ship.”

  Cutler knew she couldn’t deny that, though she had done her utmost to keep it from showing, even at the brief memorial service that she and Sulu had conducted for the crew’s benefit the day after the Korvat bombing. Of course, she’d probably lowered her guard a bit too much in front of Tim Henry several hours before that, when she had no doubt still been in shock in the immediate aftermath of the attack. . . .

  Either Henry has a very big goddamned mouth, or else Sulu’s a much more aware CO than I’ve been giving him credit for being, she thought.

  “Yes” was the only response that would come to her. “Lawrence —” She interrupted herself and started again. “The captain’s death has been a blow to all of us.”

  Sulu nodded. “I agree, even though I hadn’t got to know him very well yet. I’m sorry now that I won’t have any more opportunities to do that.”

  “At least you got command of Excelsior as a consolation prize,” she said, the bitter words tumbling out of her mouth before she could edit herself.

  His eyes narrowed with apparent anger for a moment before a look of commingled sorrow and sympathy crossed his face. The moment stretched while she awaited his response with growing unease.

  “That’s your pain talking, Commander,” he said. “And your guilt.”

  Once again, he’d surprised her; the word “guilt” landed like an unexpected body blow.

  “You actually think,” she said when she finally caught her breath, “that I blame myself for what happened to the captain?”

  “It sounds silly when you come right out and say it, doesn’t it?” he said. “After all, you had nothing whatsoever to do with the attack on Korvat. No rational person could ever hold you responsible for what happened to the captain.

  “But,” Sulu continued, “you evidently do.”

  Whom had he been talking to? Judy Klass? Cutler immediately dismissed the notion; the ship’s CMO was not only a good friend but also a top-notch professional who would never betray her by telling tales out of school.

  “And what exactly do you base that on?” Cutler said as she rose to her feet again.

  Sulu also stood, his dark, intense eyes remaining fixed on Cutler’s. “On the fact that Captain Styles was planning to retire — until you talked him into keeping his command.”

  Her jaw went abruptly slack and her mouth fell open. “Who told you . . . How did you find out about that?” she said at length. She groped behind her and found the edge of her desk, which she leaned on, grateful for its solidity and for the reassuring presence of her late captain’s swagger stick. “Did the captain tell you?”

  Sulu held up a hand in a placating gesture. “Believe me, nobody broke any confidences, least of all Captain Styles. But I’ve been thinking about this ever since the day I first came aboard. You’ve always had his ear, so it’s really the only explanation that makes sense.”

  She nodded. “He and Miguel Darby, his exec, were both planning to leave at the same time.”

  “Which just happened to be a few weeks after Starfleet formally announced the cancellation of what little remained of the transwarp drive project that began aboard Excelsior five years ago,” he said.

  The transwarp project that failed aboard Excelsior five years ago, she thought, resentful about that on Styles’s behalf although she’d been serving at a different post at the time.

  “Commander Darby was very operationally involved in that project, wasn’t he?” Sulu said.

  “Yes,” Cutler said. Sulu had obviously been making good use of Excelsior’s personnel files. “I thought the timing of his retirement made it look like he was leaving under a cloud. Miguel wouldn’t listen to me and left anyway.”

  “But you managed to persuade Captain Styles that leaving at the same time as his exec would have been bad for his career.”

  She nodded, her eyes filling with tears. “He shouldn’t have listened to me.”

  “Captain Styles was not a man who changed his mind capriciously,” Sulu said. “If you got him to reverse a major career decision — one he’d already announced publicly — then you must have made a damned fine argument.”

  “It doesn’t look so damned fine from here. Not anymore.” A
single tear separated from the corner of her right eye and began making a slow, laborious transit down her cheek. She was determined not to show weakness by wiping it away in front of him.

  “Maybe not.” He moved toward the door, then paused momentarily in the threshold after it hissed open. “Remember, I tried to persuade him that we were walking into real danger on Korvat. Did that scare him into deciding to lead from the rear? No. And I’m not sure anything either of us might have said could have done that.”

  With that, Sulu exited. The door closed behind him, leaving her alone again with her thoughts and the view of infinity her panoramic window afforded her. Cutler wiped away the tear, picked up Styles’s bomb-burned riding crop, and tucked it under her left arm. Then she walked to the wide window and stared out into the panoply of distant stars that lay beyond. She thought about Sulu’s words, repeatedly replaying their conversation — as well as the fateful one she’d had weeks ago with Styles — in her mind. Gradually growing almost meditatively calm, she began to consider the eventual possibility of forgiving herself.

  Perhaps an hour later, the intercom interrupted her reverie. “Ensign Marquez to Commander Cutler,” said the young gamma-shift communications officer, his usually calm tenor voice propelled by an unaccustomed urgency. “I think you’d better come up to the bridge right away.”

  Cutler crossed to the companel on top of her desk and pressed the button. “Cutler here, Ensign. Is everything all right?”

  A pause. Then, “I’m not sure, Commander. We just received a priority message from Starfleet Command, directed to your eyes only.”

  My eyes, she thought, her earlier hard-won calm suddenly evaporating. Not Sulu’s.

  Something was very wrong. “I’m on my way.”

  • • •

  Although it was nearly midnight, ship’s time, Sulu was restless, despite a vigorous fencing workout with Janice Rand down in the ship’s gymnasium. As was his custom on such occasions, he pulled a light-duty uniform vest on over his Starfleet-issue turtleneck and made his way onto the quiet, darkened observation lounge on deck three, on his way to making one final check-in on the bridge before retiring for the evening.

  Unlike most nights when he came here, he found he was not alone.

  “How did your meeting with Sarek go, Ambassador Dax?” Sulu asked the figure who leaned forward against the railing in front of the lounge’s broad panoramic window.

  Dax started slightly at the intrusion; he had evidently been lost in thought, perhaps contemplating the long, sleek lines of Excelsior’s glowing warp nacelles that stretched out before him, or the bright spray of warp-distorted stars scattered throughout the black infinitude beyond.

  Turning to face Sulu, the young Trill seemed to recover his composure quickly, though he still appeared unaccountably tense. “I remain in the gainful employ of the Federation Diplomatic Corps. For the moment, anyway.”

  “Congratulations,” Sulu said, relieved to hear Dax’s good news. “I’ve heard that Ambassador Sarek can be a very by the-book kind of diplomat. And this time you ended up having to write a whole new book on the fly.”

  Dax nodded, then resumed staring out the window and into the naked face of infinity. “I gather we were both forced to break a few rules on this mission, Commander. I suppose I expected at least one of us to be called on the carpet for it.”

  Sulu smiled grimly. “The night is still young, Mister Ambassador,” he said, despite the obvious lateness of the hour. He had yet to hear back from Starfleet Command regarding the contents of his after-action report, his logs, and the logs of Commanders Cutler and Rand, Dr. Klass, and Dr. Chapel; he knew he might receive communications from his superiors regarding any or all of the above at any time.

  “I think what surprised me most of all,” Dax continued, “was Sarek telling me that he thought I’d distinguish myself someday as an interstellar negotiator — provided I don’t take too many more crazy risks in the meantime.”

  A smile spread slowly across Sulu’s face as he took a quick inventory of some of the “crazy risks” to which he had been a party over the past quarter century.

  “Sometimes crazy risks are the only sensible options available,” Sulu said. Despite Dax’s recent diplomatic coup with the Klingons, he couldn’t help but wonder if the serious, tightly wound young man who stood beside him now would know what to do the next time he faced such a choice.

  Sulu felt a subtle but unmistakable sensation beneath his boots then, something that resembled an intrusive sound, but which was felt rather than heard; he noticed a very slight shift in the subaural vibrations that coursed through the great ship’s frame whenever she traveled at high warp, as though Excelsior were suddenly changing her heading or velocity.

  An electronic bosun’s whistle split the air, and Commander Cutler’s voice issued from the lounge’s comm system a moment later.

  “Bridge to Commander Sulu.”

  Sulu crossed to the compad on the wall. “Sulu here.”

  “We’ve just received top-priority communications from Starfleet Command,” Cutler said in urgent tones.

  Sulu had been wondering whether Starfleet Command would look upon Sulu’s own choices with as much indulgent tolerance as Ambassador Sarek had afforded those made by Curzon Dax. He was now all but certain that the answer had finally arrived.

  And that he wasn’t going to like it.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Stardate 9028.7 (Early 2290)

  U.S.S. Excelsior

  When he stepped onto the bridge, Sulu found both Meredith Cutler and Janice Rand waiting for him. Cutler was attired in her full uniform, while Rand was still dressed for the gym, where he presumed she had been when the communication from Starfleet had arrived.

  Both of them looked anxious. And neither needed to say a word to make it crystal clear that the message from Starfleet did not contain good news.

  “May we speak to you in private, Commander?” Cutler said. Whatever news had just arrived, she wasn’t eager to share it indiscriminately.

  “Please,” Sulu said, gesturing toward the turbolift from which he’d just emerged. Their expressions sober, Cutler and Rand followed him inside.

  The journey to the large, secure conference room one deck below the bridge passed in tense silence, and seemed to take an eternity. None of the trio spoke until the door had hissed shut behind them.

  No one made a move to take a seat around the conference table. Sulu stood as well, looking from Cutler’s face to Rand’s and back again before breaking the awkward hush. “I wonder why Starfleet didn’t say whatever they wanted to say directly to me,” he said, though he was pretty sure he already knew the reason.

  “Probably because what they had to say affects Excelsior’s entire chain of command, sir,” Cutler said, her eyes brimming with what looked like sincere regret as she stood at attention. “Effective immediately, Admiral Cartwright has relieved you of command because of your decision to enter Klingon space contrary to orders. I’ve forwarded it all to the terminal in your quarters.”

  “Thank you,” Sulu said quietly.

  “Cartwright has also called a hearing on Earth,” Rand said, looking miserable. “To determine whether Starfleet Command will take any further action against you. We’re already under way, at warp seven.”

  Sulu nodded, not surprised and not particularly afraid. After all, he had been called on the carpet before, along with James Kirk and the rest of the Enterprise’s senior staff after the Genesis affair and the alien space probe incursion. All the charges against him had been summarily dismissed on that occasion, though he would always suspect that his subsequent career had become every bit as stalled as though he’d been sent to a penal colony instead of back to starship duty.

  Now a general court-martial, and perhaps even a lengthy prison term as a consequence, was beginning to look like a disconcertingly likely possibility.

  “Cartwright has made me interim CO,” Cutler said. “Pending the outcome of all of this, of course
.”

  “I’ve accepted the job of acting exec for the duration,” Rand said.

  Sulu wanted to congratulate Rand, but held his tongue because he didn’t want his old friend to think he was being snide. Instead he simply nodded, studying both women’s faces as he tried to process what was happening. Rand displayed the empathetic expression of someone forced to watch a dear old friend suffer a terrible and inalterable fate.

  The look in Cutler’s eyes was one of pure, unalloyed guilt. Sulu recognized it instantly; he’d seen it in his own bathroom mirror, immediately after the murder of Captain Styles had landed him temporarily in Excelsior’s command chair.

  “I suppose this means I’m in your custody now, Commander,” Sulu said, squaring his shoulders as he locked his gaze with that of Cutler, whose mien grew even more miserable as she nodded.

  “Where’s my next stop, then?” Sulu asked, keeping his voice calm and nonconfrontational. “The brig?”

  Frowning, Rand turned to face Cutler. “Is that really necessary?”

  Cutler’s jaw muscles grew as taut as the ancient, antigrav-assisted cables that held up the Golden Gate Bridge. “According to my orders, Rand, he’s supposed to be confined.”

  “But, the brig?” Rand said.

  Cutler’s eyes moved from side to side, like trapped animals seeking a means of escape. Then she relaxed slightly, and a very small smile crossed her lips. “That part of the transmission must have been garbled.” Facing Sulu squarely, she said, “Will confinement to quarters do?”

  Despite the grimness of the current circumstances, Sulu allowed a wry grin to appear on his face. Maybe there’s hope for you yet, Mister Cutler.

  “I’m done making trouble for the moment,” he said aloud. He gestured toward the door. “Walk me home.

  “And take good care of Excelsior.”

  • • •

  Janice Rand was not about to take this lying down.

  After escorting her old friend to his quarters cum jail cell, she made a grim beeline for her own small personal space — and for the computer terminal atop her desk, which she wasted no time activating.